In St. Ottilen participated 112 people from Sweden, Finnland, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, Austria, Holland, Hungary, Japan, Italy, Thailand, Norway, Swiss and Germany. The conference speeches will be published as a book.

Informations about

... time and theme
... the programm
... review.
 

Friday
 

16.00-18.00     Arrival, registration, payments
18.30              Meal
19.00-21.15     Introduction of participants ant their work.

Saturday

7.30-8.00    Meditation
8.00            Breakfast

Context 1: Buddhists in China/Japan

9.00-9.50         Buddhist Perception of Jesus and Christianity in the early Buddhist
                        Christian controversies in China and Japan during 16/17th century.
                        Speaker: Prof. Dr. Iso Kern, University of Bern, Switzerland

10.00-10.50     Jesus in Contempory Zen
                      Speaker: Prof. Dr. Shizuteru Ueda, University of Kyoto, Japan

11.10-12.00    Discussion

12.15             Meal

Context II: Buddhists in South-East-Asia

15.00-15.50    Buddhist Perception of Jesus and Christianity among early western Buddhists.
                        Speaker: Prof. Dr. Frank Usarki, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

16.00-16.50     Jesus in recent Buddhist writings published in the West
                        Speaker: Karl Schmied, many years president of the
                        "German Buddhist Union", Fischbachau, Germany.

17.10-18.00   Diskussion
18.30            Meal
19.30-21.00   Workshops:Christian-Buddhist Encounters in Europe
21.00-21.30   Meditation
 

Sunday:

7.30 -8.15        Mass
8.15                Breakfast

Context III: Buddhists in the West

9.00-9.50   Jesus and Christianity within the Buddhist modernism.
                    Speaker:  Dr. H. Muermel, University of Leipzig, Germany

10.00-10.50  Jesus and Christianity in the writings of Bikkuh Buddhadasa
                    Speaker: Than Santikaro, Suan Mokkh, Thailand
 

11.10-12.00     Diskussion
12.15              Meal
 

Christian Responses

15.00-15.50     What do I as a Christian expect Buddhists to discover Jesus? I
                        Speakers:
                            Prof. Dr. Notto Telle, University of Oslo, Norway
 16.00-16.50    What do I as a Christian expect Buddhists to discover Jesus? II
                           Prof. Michael von Brück, University of Munich, Germany.
17.10-18.00     Discussion
18.30              Meal
19.30-21.00     Workshops: Christain - Buddhist Encounters in Europe.
21.00             Meditation
 

Monday:

7.30-8.00          Meditation
8.00                 Breakfast
9.00-10.15        Plenary discussion on the topic of the conference
                        (two short critical/consructive inputs)
12.15                Meal, depatures

Jesus Through Buddhist Eyes
Third Conference of the European Network
of Buddhist-Christian Studies
St Ottilien, Germany, 26 Feb. - 1 March 1999

From Dr. John May

This ambitious conference, attended by well over 100 participants
including a number of practitioners of Buddhist meditation from southern
Germany and Austria, has put the European Network of
Buddhist-Christian Studies firmly on its feet. Intended mainly for
academics working in the field and held entirely in English, the
conference, on "Buddhist Perceptions of Jesus", traced various paths
from the polemics which characterised relations between Buddhists
and Christians well into the century now ending to the remarkable
progress made by Buddhist-Christian dialogue in recent decades. The
Archabbey of St Ottilien has itself been the scene of intermonastic
exchanges between the Benedictine monks and their Japanese Zen
counterparts.

The architecture of the conference brought out clearly the distance
that has been travelled. Iso Kern (Berne) examined the missionary
methodology of the Jesuits in 16th and 17th century China. He showed
how they preferred to rely on arguments from reason rather than affront
the Chinese with the full implications of Christian revelation, treading a
thin line between absorption into harmony with Chinese religion as “a
special type of Buddhism” and controversy about the uniqueness of
Jesus and his redemptive death on the cross. The Christian idea of a
Creator who redeems a sinful world by the substitutionary sacrifice of
his own Son was so repugnant to Confucian sensibility that the Jesuits
chose a different route, though Prof. Kern defended them against
Pascal’s accusation that they ‘hid’ the scandal of the cross. Heinz
Mürmel (Leipzig, in a paper read in his absence) sketched the sterile
polemics which characterised early Buddhist-Christian encounters in
Ceylon/Sri Lanka, while Frank Usarski (Sao Paulo) analysed the
equally bitter exchanges between early German converts to Buddhism
and their Christian opponents. We were to find not only that these
controversies are still remembered in Southeast Asia, but that the
obstacles to understanding encountered by the Jesuits in China and
Japan still cause problems in Buddhist-Christian relations today.

Of fundamental importance to the development of the conference was
a difficult paper by Shizuteru Ueda (Kyoto) on “Jesus in Contemporary
Japanese Zen”. Starting with his teacher Nishitani’s presentation on
“Nietzsche and Eckhart” to Heidegger’s seminar in 1938, Prof. Ueda
set out to show how both European nihilism and Christian absolutism
can be overcome by Nishitani’s understanding of shûnyatâ: “The last
ground of ‘I am’ is without ground and groundless”. Shûnyatâ is itself
subject to shûnyatâ: nihilism can only be surmounted through nihilism
itself. This dynamic relationship between Into-Nothingness and
Out-of-Nothingness is Zen’s point of access to Paul’s characterisation
of Christian life-out-of-death: “I live no more, Christ lives in me” (Gal
2:20). Confronted by the question “Who said this?”, as Nishitani
confronted his Christian friend Muto, the Christian is challenged to ask
whether he or she can actually say it, thereby bearing true witness.
Ueda’s problem is not with this witness, but with the Christian claim that
Jesus is unique, for God is not only infinite Person but infinite Openness
(basho).

Some of these themes were echoed by two speakers who based
themselves on experience rather than philosophy: Karl Schmied, a lay
associate of Thich Nhat Hanh, and Than Santikharo Bhikkhu, an
American monk at  Suan Mokkh and Buddhadâsa’s translator in the
last eight years of his life. Without repudiating his Catholic roots, Mr
Schmied said that he had simply found more joy in Buddhism. If Jesus is
Son of Man and Son of God non-dualistically, could not the relationship
between Buddhism and Christianity be one of non-duality, despite
obvious differences (rebirth/historical uniqueness; no-self/person;
emptiness/being). Cannot Jesus be seen as a universal Bodhisattva
whose ‘centre’ is everywhere rather than as God’s ‘only’ son?

Santikharo Bhikkhu, who still visits the Christian congregation in which
he grew up, said that he also found it impossible to accept that Jesus
should be the only ‘incarnation’ of the divine rather than a universal
prophet, adding that his work with Catholic priests and nuns in the
Philippines had enriched his Buddhist practice. Buddhadâsa had found
Christian equivalents for dharma, law, duty and the fruits of practice in
nature, God, redemption and salvation, though the concept of a ‘good’
creation appears naive to Buddhists, for whom this world arises out of
ignorance and craving and is characterised by suffering.

How are Christians to respond to this sympathetic but demanding
Buddhist agenda? The cudgels were taken up by two Lutheran
theologians with long experience of Buddhism. Notto Thelle (Oslo)
suggested that Buddhists will have to become more daring in crossing
boundaries now that Buddhism is spreading in the West. Their
assumption that Buddhism is unsurpassable has the effect of
“neutralising” all other traditions and amounts to the same strategy as
Christian ‘inclusivism’, which Prof. Ueda had rightly found to be
inadequate. Prof. Thelle developed interesting complementarities
between Buddhism as a “religion of the eye”, which begins as
philosophy and grows into story, and Christianity as a “religion of the
ear”, which initially takes a narrative form but gives rise to philosophy. It
is beginning to exist, not ceasing to exist, that is the true mystery. The
Christian concept of creation, traditionally couched in the language of
being, could more appropriately be seen in terms of nihility as a
component of all things. The Christian emphasis on reconciliation and
communion suggests the Buddhist ‘between’ (basho) and is one way of
speaking of the ‘suchness’ of reality as revealed by the Tathâgata
Jesus. Whereas Buddhists stress compassion, for Christians the
responsibility that leads to action is important: should Buddhists be more
‘disturbed’ by social injustice?

This theme was also taken up by Michael von Brück (Munich), who
pointed out that all religion, inasmuch as it is a social construct, is also
a social factor. His main concern, however, was with the spirituality
beyond religion, the reality beyond distinct identities, to attain which
“you have to shûnyatâ shûnyatâ”, as Prof. Ueda had said, just as
Christians must avoid trying to ‘grasp’ God. Both Buddhism and
Christianity are ultimately about death and dying. The test of whether
Buddhists and Christians have really heard the ‘lion’s roar’ of the
Buddha or Jesus is their response to suffering. Understanding - not the
same thing as agreement - will be built on this, not on the “hermeneutic
devices” of doctrines. Not pluralism, but what he called “relationalism, a
partnership in identity” will disclose the universality of our attitudes, e.g.
to social reality. For Christians, spirituality means accepting God’s
unconditional love and ourselves as expressions of its power. The lotus
and the cross are not in opposition!

Profound and comprehensive as it was, this conference opened up still
further areas for exploration, among them the Buddhist and Christian
teachings on nature/creation. The Network’s next meeting will be held
in Lund, Sweden, in 2001. Questions were raised about the
conference methodology (underrepresentation of women, more
interactive process), but it definitely marked a new phase in relations
between Buddhists and Christians in Europe.

John D’Arcy May, Irish School of Ecumenics, Dublin
(14/10/99)